South Korean Banks and Broadcasting Organizations Suffer Major Damage from Cyber Attack

The attack included the defacement of a Korean ISP/telecoms provider and also the crippling of servers belonging to a number of organizations.

The defacement displays an elaborate animated Web page with sound effects, showing three skulls and included a message by the claimed attackers calling themselves the “Whois” team.

The attack was first noticed when a number of websites began to experience problems. Customers of banks could not access their online accounts and reports of other sites being down began to surface. While specific details are not known at this time, it has been reported that a number of sites affected had their hard drives wiped leaving the affected computers in a crippled state.

There are currently no indications of the source of this attack or how the attackers infiltrated the affected parties. The real motives of the attack are also unclear but in recent times there has been a ramping up of political tensions in the Korean peninsula and these attacks may be part of either a clandestine attack or the work of nationalistic hacktivists taking issues into their own hands.